How About a Bailout for Sirius XM?
It has become abundantly clear that something needs to be done to boost Sirius XM Radio’s stock value. Confidence in its ability to boost subscribers is quickly draining, according to several media and economic analysts.
While writing up a summary of the company’s stock woes in a Satellite News feature, I thought of turning to our readers for a remedy. How would you turn things around for Sirius XM? Is it too late? Has the merger sealed its demise? Is there a strategy that you feel hasn’t been explored? These question are asked quite often by executives I meet who are outside of the satellite radio industry.
What if Sirius XM decided to turn its service into an application that could be downloaded to an iPhone or a Google cell phone? You would have to be a subscriber to use the service, of course, and it would give the company a right to challenge companies already providing this service on the iPhone (uXM and uSirius) Wouldn’t these applications give Sirius XM even more mobility than the current portable units? Or am I completely off the mark?
(3 comments)
The simple solution is for someone to take a broomstick and sweep out the dozens of executives earning huge salaries and driving up their operating costs. Do they really need so many vice presidents reporting to senior vice presidents reporting to executive vice presidents? XM had some 35 of them prior to the merger. Their operating costs can be slashed with absolutely no risk to their quality of service. There is way too much “good old boy” networking on this network.
Comment by Ann Nomalous — October 1, 2008 @ 3:20 pm
The FCC and congress needs to get into the 21st century and stop trying to regulate content and making XM Sirius a political football. The regualtors need to let the new company respond to the market the best way they see fit. Mandating HD radio and minimums for minority programming has no place in the free enterprise. “Satellite delivered streaming content to handhelds and mobiles” should be about as specific as the license needs to be. How cool would it be to be able to watch Fox News streamed to your iPhone or GPS screen in MP4 format? Now that two companies aren’t in a bidding war for content and the redundancy can be removed, there is no reason the two shouldn’t be stronger as one AND provide better variety for the subscribers. Less regulation, fewer executives, more varied content….and yes, I’m an XM subscriber and a shareholder
Comment by Howie DeFelice — October 2, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
OK.First you have disgruntled shareholders who bought at 3.00+ who are not happy with the loss. Second this a very viable broadcasting service that after the merger (XM+SIRIUS) have become in sat radio the only game in town.Worst scenario is that they get bought out by the communications giants in the US. If not they will restructure or since our president elect and the house is using SIRIUS for its “broadcasts” you will be seeing funds getting injected to them.
Mark E.
Comment by mark edwards — December 3, 2008 @ 1:50 am